Firewind

No miles have ever posted from my two Groupon accounts for purchases through Delta or USAir portals. I made at least reasonable efforts to chase them down early on. It especially mattered in my Dividend Miles Grand Slam quest, so I made some unreasonable efforts -- but no cigar.

Firewind

I just email subscribe to both directly. But it's beginning to feel like LivingSocial is getting out of hand with multiple offers per day. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to stick (OK, keep up) with them. And I hope Groupon doesn't decide to compete in this manner. But I'll stick with both for a while.

peteropny

I've previously bought 1 Groupon through the AA portal - it posted automatically - just bought another.

icurhere2

I only purchase Groupons from the laptop where I have the AA search bar installed. Scores of Groupons and no problems with getting the miles posted (ever).

Firewind

Well, I'll just have to switch to AA. Thanks for the positive reports.

al613

Tango gift cards for 50% off (good for Amazon, Home Depot and many others).

Tango gift cards for 50% off (good for Amazon, Home Depot and many others).

CarteraCommerce

To earn rewards for online shopping, including with Groupon, please make sure that you first log in to the reward program shopping mall to begin shopping. As long as you are logged in and click through the mall to make your purchase, you will earn the stated rewards associated with the various merchants.

Avoid using coupon codes from other websites or clicking to other websites during your shopping session to ensure that your purchase is credited to the shopping program and not another website.

Installing the program shopping toolbar will also ensure that your purchases track and earn rewards.

Rewards for online shopping typically post to your shopping account within three business days after your purchase ships. However, sometimes posting can take longer, so please allow up to 45 days for rewards to post.

If miles do not post within the alluded time frame, please contact customer support for the shopping program (through the contact form on the mall) with an e-receipt of your purchase which includes the order date, merchant, subtotal amount and order number so that it can be researched.

Sincerely,
Cartera Commerce Representative

Firewind

No. Not with Dividend Miles or SkyMiles. I do look forward to it being as reported with AAdvantage.

As to the toolbar, it was reported many times during the Dividend Miles Grand Slam that the toolbar actually "hijacked" or somehow intercepted the points-earning if one went through the toolbar, even if the valance thingy dropped down to say that points would be earned. Then the points didn't come through. I learned this as I tried to chase down the Grand Slam "hit". It's over in the USAir Grand Slam sub-forum - not from me.

I look forward to the Cartera representative acknowledging this problem, and then saying that it's been fixed. If s/he isn't familiar with the problem, then s/he needs to follow up to confirm that it's fixed in order to be credible. Sorry, but all one needs to do is search on "Cartera", and all the history will be there.

And I do remember, during the Grand Slam, being told by Cartera that "It may be because we don't give loyalty program points for purchases that are subject to other codes or discounts" ...and Groupon is all about discounts. Well, of course we have reliable reports here that they do give miles for Groupons, but that was the stop-gap answer last November.

One thing that has changed is that there is the Cartera representative to FlyerTalk, so one can hope...

Marathon Man

But when this actually happens (and if it even does) is not really known by anyone, including the God or Godz of whomever people in here may believe...

According to many peoples' reports I have heard, this is not really true. Many people have installed a few Cartera mall toolbars in their day and the loosely tracked ratio is pretty bad as what posts and what does not. Plus, if the toolbar has some sort of download or initial bonus for setting it up, most will say: "Good luck with actually getting that. Ever."

Or 60 or 90 or even into the next year in some cases! But hey, sorry--must have been the customer's fault.

Now, many people will suggest that one is sure to write in at least 10 times, call a few times, fax, mail and submit through possible legal means if and where necessary--just to be SURE they got your messages about any missing miles. It has been found by many that even if you make them a spread sheet outlining all your missing miles with each item detailed exactly like they ask (as stated above) there's no guarantee of WHEN these things will be gotten to or WHO will 'own' the issue for you there. And, if someone does get to emailing with you, it is ALWAYS a good idea to be sure to keep detailed copies of EVERYTHING because some companies such as this one have been known to forget what they said and so you have to remind them of it.

While many believe that in such a situation, Cartera ought to have within its vast retail and airline means the ability to front you the miles once you have done such work to prove your case and then do their 'research' later, you will sadly find this does not happen. You may find you pretty much get nothing, and certainly nothing extra for having had to jump through hoops and do THEIR work for them on YOUR time just to get these multi-month old missing miles from something you will now tell your friends to never ever do, trust or sign up for again.

Finally, should Cartera actually post the miles into your shopping mall account, it now STILL has to move to the airline account itself, which can take another x number of weeks (or months) depending on how many teeth you wish to pull here. You may one day actually SEE all the transactions posted to your pending shopping area, but to get the miles to show up in the airline account may be a pipe dream.

As a result, many people think that the best bet is to actually avoid doing ANYTHING with ANY airline shopping mall... at least not with those run by this entity named Cartera.

Many believe they do not do a through job and should not be in business saying they do. Hence, they lie or they are just plain inept. One or both.

Should they actually fully address these issues and change many of their ways, then yes, people could possibly love the shopping experience online. But for the most part, those who shop many times have probably been burned at least a few of them, and those who claim to have never had a missing mileage problem are just darn lucky. Because it will come. Oh yes, it will come.

FreeCause, however, runs a few other airline malls but they are said to be pretty bad at times themselves. The only one said to have it right is Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping. So far reports are that people get what they go for and it posts rather quickly with no pains.


I dunno, I just figured this post might at least help a few FTers be careful when trying to get miles or save $.

Good luck!

MM

CarteraCommerce

Please note that during the Dividend Miles Grand Slam another vendor operated the shopping mall and toolbar, not Cartera Commerce.

For questions regarding transactions made on the US Airways Dividend Miles Shopping Mall prior to 11/15/11, please send an email to: [email protected] for missing transactions to be researched and resolved. Unfortunately Cartera does not have any information related to purchases made prior to the launch of the new StoreFront program on 11/15.

Sincerely,
Cartera Commerce

mikeef

Don't even get me started on FreeCause...

Mike

Firewind

I stand corrected re Cartera vs. FreeCause, and apologize for aiming wrong.

Marathon Man

Ummm, actually this statement above is not quite correct....

It appeared at the tail end of the US GC promo, there was a very short time where BOTH the FC mall and the Cartera mall existed and the US GC promo was still going on.

The promo went on til Nov 14, 2011 so any purchase done through that date could count.

I went in and bought an iTune for one more hit:

11/14/2011 12/01/11 DIVIDEND MILES STORE FRONT PURCHASE, ITUNES.COM 1

The above is copy pasted from my US acct and I recall having decided at the last minute to buy one, use the mall, and I found that it was now a Cartera mall!

While I also did see elsewhere in US links and other links (like in forums and blogs) that one could have still possibly used the older FC link to get in to their US mall, this Cartera one had ALREADY started to take affect!

because there were now two malls, I actually did wonder if anything would even post and if there would be any affect on the promo and my hits in my acct.

Also, I asked myself: "Why would the airline or those who run such malls let a big change such as this happen WHEN that major promo was STILL going on?"

Well, I guess I got lucky because the 1 mile did post from the Cartera mall...

Anyway you can clearly see that the Store Front, which is what Cartera calls its US mall, did in fact exist at least as early as the 14th of Nov, and I can tell you that this hit posted and did make another set of credits happen in my US GS promo climb in that US acct.

So it worked out for me here, but even still, the above Cartera rep has it wrong. And he/she has yet to address/contest/correct ANY of the comments I made in my earlier post today.

MM

PS/edit: I could possibly even dig up screen shots of both malls existing but even if I cannot, the point of this is that people who had FAILED mileage issues with end-of-promo purchases could now use my evidence as a way to get Cartera to further research the problem, because it is clear that things did not take affect ONLY as of the 15th. It happened sooner, so try and go back and figure out which mall you actually used, possibly without readily realizing it!

Firewind

Thank you for the refresher, Marathon Man.

Time for an expiation retraction from me here. But I'm still in accord with mikeef w/r/t FreeCause. Not sure the difference matters as much to us as it does to FreeCause and Cartera.

Marathon Man

I can say that personally, I have decided to do NO more business with any Cartera mall and would rather go without miles from shopping online than to give the portals a whirl (I'm still waiting on missing miles from a fall new UA ToolBar spend, and a late fall DL toolbar download bonus, and of course thousands of miles from hundreds of transactions from the UA MP shopping portal)

For FC, I have recently used the HA one for very small things and do not expect them to post but when they do I am happy. They've already burned me and many others on big gigs with this airline in the recent past. But for now, I have to get to 30k HA miles and have just shy of that amount right now. So once I reach that mark I wont be using FC anymore either. Yes there are other ways, but I still do need paper, ink and such sometimes.

While I've toyed with the idea of doing this with Nordstrom and the BA mall, the only shopping portal I would consider going forward is the UR Chase one, but I'm new to them, having only just gotten and reached spend on the Sapphire and Ink Bold cards.

For now, to be completely honest, I am almost liberated to NOT have to reply on or wait for posts of miles to come from online mall shopping. the last one I did was that iTune for 1 mile above on US Air (Cartera) and a Staples purchase for about 50 miles on HA (FC)

The malls have pretty much lost my business.

one would think if they wanted it, or wanted it from people like me (who have the money and desire to play the game when it works) they would shape up.

I think people who want to use Groupon and/or other similar coupons AND also use the malls SHOULD get credits on both. It'd be just like if you have say, a manufacturer's coupon at a store for something you buy and also a store coupon too. Many savvy people like this sort of thing no matter their income level. If companies cannot grasp that or allow for it, they lose.